My writing

What Is a Short Story?

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The website Blurb has a post with this title which I found interesting because I am currently writing a collection of short stories set in America. The author of this ‘blurb’ is not identified, and it is not dated.

“Compared to novels, short stories often get overlooked as an art form, but these singular works of fiction deserve a closer look. Short stories give readers all the compelling characters, drama, and descriptive language of great fiction but in a truly compact package.

So what is the secret behind those potent, carefully written gems? Here we tackle the definition of a short story, the key elements, examples, and some of the most common questions about short stories.

What is a short story?

A short story is a work of prose fiction that can be read in one sitting—usually between 20 minutes to an hour. There is no maximum length, but the average short story is 1,000 to 7,500 words, with some outliers reaching 10,000 or 15,000 words. At around 10 to 25 pages, that makes short stories much shorter than novels, with only a few approaching novella length. A piece of fiction shorter than 1,000 words is considered a “short short story” or “flash fiction,” and anything less than 300 words is rightfully called “microfiction.”

What are the key elements of a short story?

The setting of a short story is often simplified (one time and place), and one or two main characters may be introduced without full backstories. In this concise, concentrated format, every word and story detail has to work extra hard!

Short stories typically focus on a single plot instead of multiple subplots, as you might see in novels. Some stories follow a traditional narrative arc, with exposition (description) at the beginning, rising action, a climax (peak moment of conflict or action), and a resolution at the end. However, contemporary short fiction is more likely to begin in the middle of the action (in medias res), drawing readers right into a dramatic scene.

While short stories of the past often revolved around a central theme or moral lesson, today it is common to find stories with ambiguous endings. This type of unresolved story invites open-ended readings and suggests a more complex understanding of reality and human behavior.

The short story genre is well suited to experimentation in prose writing style and form, but most short story authors still work to create a distinct mood using classic literary devices (point of view, imagery, foreshadowing, metaphor, diction/word choice, tone, and sentence structure).

Short stories have one or two main characters

What is the history of the short story?

Short-form storytelling can be traced back to ancient legends, mythology, folklore, and fables found in communities all over the world. Some of these stories existed in written form, but many were passed down through oral traditions. By the 14th century, the most well-known stories included One Thousand and One Nights (Middle Eastern folk tales by multiple authors, later known as Arabian Nights) and Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer).

It wasn’t until the early 19th century that short story collections by individual authors appeared more regularly in print. First, it was the publication of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, then Edgar Allen Poe’s Gothic fiction, and eventually, stories by Anton Chekhov, who is often credited as a founder of the modern short story.

The popularity of short stories grew along with the surge of print magazines and journals. Newspaper and magazine editors began publishing stories as entertainment, creating a demand for short, plot-driven narratives with mass appeal. By the early 1900s, The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Magazine were paying good money for short stories that showed more literary techniques. That golden era of publishing gave rise to the short story as we know it today.

What are the different types of short stories?

Short stories come in all kinds of categories: action, adventure, biography, comedy, crime, detective, drama, dystopia, fable, fantasy, history, horror, mystery, philosophy, politics, romance, satire, science fiction, supernatural, thriller, tragedy, and Western. Here are some popular types of short stories, literary styles, and authors associated with them:  

  • Fable: A tale that provides a moral lesson, often using animals, mythical creatures, forces of nature, or inanimate objects to come to life (Brothers Grimm, Aesop)
  • Flash fiction: A story between 5 to 2,000 words that lacks traditional plot structure or character development and is often characterized by a surprise or twist of fate (Lydia Davis)
  • Mini saga: A type of micro-fiction using exactly 50 words (!) to tell a story
  • Vignette: A descriptive scene or defining moment that does not contain a complete plot or narrative but reveals an important detail about a character or idea (Sandra Cisneros)
  • Modernism: Experimenting with narrative form, style, and chronology (inner monologues, stream of consciousness) to capture the experience of an individual (James Joyce, Virginia Woolf)
  • Postmodernism: Using fragmentation, paradox, or unreliable narrators to explore the relationship between the author, reader, and text (Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Borges)
  • Magical realism: Combining realistic narrative or setting with elements of surrealism, dreams, or fantasy (Gabriel García Márquez)
  • Minimalism: Writing characterized by brevity, straightforward language, and a lack of plot resolutions (Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel)”

I don’t agree that the above list represents an inclusive list of ‘popular types of short stories’. The stories I write tend to be either plot or character driven. It is the length of the story (10 to 12 pages) which is challenging; there is only space for essential description, dialogue must be to the point, and action tends to be terse and clear. It is possible to inject tone through the language used by the narrator and the characters.

For me, the most important challenge is inventing new stories. I’ll need at least 25 stories, and at the moment, I’m only half way finished. I do rely on personal experiences, or stories which I’ve heard about which strike my fancy. On several occasions, I’ve started a story, realised that I wasn’t enthusiastic about it, and deleted it. The experience of writing a short story in quite intense compared to writing a novel.

Having Fun!

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I can particularly relate to the email which Harry Bingham sent out on Friday.

It starts out with a quote about having fun: “Benjamin Jowett was a Victorian professor of Greek, a theologian and a college reformer. Photos of him have a somewhat stern and whiskery air, but he is responsible for one of my favourite quotes ever:

We have sought truth, and sometimes perhaps have found it. But have we had any fun?

I love that. As writers, we’re not all that interested in truth, so perhaps we can rephrase: We have sought a decent story, and sometimes perhaps have told one. But have we had any fun?

That quote is in my head because it occurred to me this week that perhaps my best books are also the ones I most enjoyed writing. It’s certainly true that the ones I most laboured over ended up proficient enough, but less joyous in the reading.”

He goes on to mention several books that he has written that he enjoyed writing and people have enjoyed reading. He says, “Overall, I think it is true that a joyous writing experience leads to a better reading experience. That’s nice to know in one way. Most writers could make more money in other jobs – or indeed, use those other jobs to fund their writing time – so it definitely matters that writing is fun.

But life ain’t always easy and writing isn’t always pleasurable. What happens if you are finding the writing a slog? The joyous writing = good writing rule is a comfort if you’re having fun. But doesn’t that also mean that painful writing = bad writing? In which case, the rule seems to double your troubles.

I think maybe it does.

I do strongly believe that you should write mostly for the fun of it. If you’re not actually under contract to a publisher, then why write if you hate it? Of course, in any book, there’ll be tough patches that you just have to push through, but that’s the same as any challenging hobby. Overcoming those challenges is part of the joy.

But some books have the joy/challenge balance wrong. The joy’s never quite enough, the challenges rather too constant.

So what to do? As usual, I don’t really know the answer, but my personal cocktail of solutions includes the following:

  • KBO. This was a core part of Winston Churchill’s philosophy on life. If women were around, he expressed it as “KBO”. If they weren’t, he said it plainly: Keep Bu**ering On. In the end, an ability just to push through the tough patches is the single most important quality of any writer.
  • If possible, take a break. And the breakier the break, the better. A sharp change of routine – a holiday, a love affair – is going to work better than “everything the same, but no writing”.
  • Figure out if there’s a technical flaw somewhere. A big one this, especially for less experienced writers. So often enough, you start a project with enthusiasm. At about the 30,000 word mark, that enthusiasm starts to dissipate. Then you write more text, but it just seems pointless. You don’t like what you’ve written. You give up. And often, often, often it’s because of an identifiable and fixable technical fault. So it could be something you’re doing wrong in terms of points of view. Or your sense of place. Or your plotting. Or almost anything. Those things will make your writing seem bad (because in this one specific way, it is bad). Then, since you don’t know what the issue is or how to fix it, you just give up. That’s where a professional can help.
  • Cut. Oh my goodness, this is so simple and so powerful. If you are telling a good story in 120,000 words that you could express equally well in 90,000 words – and it’s very, very common to see such things – then you have attached a huge drag anchor to your narrative. It can never leap free because you are burdening the reader with 30,000 purposeless words. Cut, my friend. Cut more than you think you can cut. Take joy in cutting. You will feel your manuscript lift and surge forward in the water. It’ll love you for the surgery. Be ambitious.
  • The dagger in the table. And sometimes, simply enough, a narrative starts to drag because it’s a bit draggy. The set-up is great. The ending you have in mind is fantastic. But the bit in-between? It’s all a bit ho-hum. So kill someone. Or have a bank robbery. Or have someone get abducted or buried underground. Offer a mid-story incident that shatters the shape of the story that the reader was expecting. Write a novel with two climaxes. Plunge the dagger into the table and watch it quiver.
  • Ask yourself: have a nailed the basic concept for this novel? If you don’t have a stellar concept, your novel will never be stellar. If your concept – your elevator pitch – just isn’t all that strong, the novel will essentially be unsaleable no matter how many nice little plot turns you have in chapter 22, and no matter how quirky you make Aunt Maisie. And if you have embarked on a novel with too little zizz, then add it. You don’t have to scrap what you’ve written and start again. You just have to find the ingredient – a ghost, a murder, a secret letter, a splash of magic, a something – that gives life to all the rest.”

I think Harry is right: that fun can make big difference in writing. I’m working on a collection of short stories, and I’m having a lot of fun writing them. But I’ve decided to stick to some rules. First of all, my idea for a new story has to be thoroughly tested in my mind for at least a week until I’m sure that readers would enjoy the story. My second rule is if the text starts to lose momentum I stop and fix it, taking whatever time it takes. So far, I’ve had only one story that I just didn’t like after three pages. And my third rule is to look at my completed work through the eyes of a sceptical reader. I keep finding little flaws that are fixable.

Page One

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Last Friday’s email from Harry of Jericho Writers was about writing that first page of a book.

“The start of your book is a delicate, beautiful thing.

It has a joyous quality for sure. Something like cracking open an egg, the peep of new sun, climbing on board a train, feeling the flap of a sail, a rope straining at its mooring. You only get that feeling once per book, and it’s worth relishing.

You can go big, if you want to. You can start in the middle of a bar-room brawl, with bottles flying and chairs thwacking. Or you can start with something apparently small, except that the wriggle of a little story-worm catches the reader’s attention and, dammit, they find they’re hooked.

But, of course, there’s another issue with beginnings, a bothersome one. Because agents, blast them, start books from the beginning too and they are very unusual readers indeed. Partly, yes, they’re unusual in that they’re professionals looking for work they can sell. But also, they start reading literally thousands of novels a year. How many first pages does an average agent read? Maybe two thousand. How many actual books does an average agent read? Well, probably roughly as many as you do – or a few more, because they’re pros.

Because agents read so many opening pages, they are deeply – horribly – familiar with the clichés of the genre. That means, they are exquisitely sensitive to badness in openings.

What’s worse is this: the opening of your novel may well be the first thing you’ve ever written. It’s where you’re at your least experienced, not your most. That’s true in general, but it’s also true of this particular story. Midway through your book, you’ll know your characters better, your story better, your themes better, your voice better – everything better.

Which means that when an agent picks up your book it’s effectively an encounter between a Story Opening Super-Analyser and a scarily undercooked Story Writer. Not fair, right?

And look: nothing I go on to say in this email is absolute. You could pick some horrible cliché to open your novel with but, if you deliver that opening in a confident and well-written way, then any sane agent will read on, with interest. For everything I say below, you should bear in mind that there’s almost certainly a classic of world literature that takes the cliché and rebuilds it into something wonderful.

At the same time, clichés feel wrong for a reason. If you can avoid them, you probably should. And with that said …

Dreams

There’s something horribly schoolchildish about any story that starts with a dream, before, two or three paragraphs later, admitting, “Then I woke up.” It feels cool, but cool in much the same way that my kids think that making pots of green goo out of ordinary kitchen ingredients is cool. Once your age hits double-digits, it’s time to move on a bit.

I think there are also two more specific reasons for concern. One is that dreams are totally unboundaried. Not rule-governed. And that doesn’t just break the laws of life, but of stories too. Even kids’ fantasy fiction has rules that govern its fictional world. Opening without rules feels disappointing – the difference between a park kickabout and a World Cup tie.

The other is that, once you get two or three paragraphs in, you play that limp trick on the reader: ha, ha, fooled you, it was only a dream. That yields a feeling akin to disappointment. “You made me read this, on the premise that it mattered, but it didn’t matter. Oh.” I’d gently suggest that this is not a feeling you want anyone – still less an agent – to encounter on the first page of your novel.

Beds

More generally, one agent once told me that a stunning proportion of all manuscripts she read – she reckoned well over ten per cent – opened with a character in bed. She reckoned she’d almost never, perhaps literally never, offered representation for such a book.

There’s nothing obviously wrong with that. You could imagine some Beckettian novel that opens with a character in bed and keeps that character in pyjamas for most of the story. But … again, I think there are two specific issues here.

One is that you don’t want to bracket yourself with the ten per cent of novels that an agent is most inclined to reject. The other is this: why is it that so many authors start with a character in bed and (usually) waking up?

I think it’s that the writer themselves are warming up. They are aware of embarking on something new. Of introducing a new character to the world. So they start at the beginning: the opening of the day. As they move their character through toilet / shower / coffee / conflakes, they limber up, like your pre-gym warm-up.

And: don’t warm up. Or, if you do, don’t do it on page. Don’t do it anywhere that the reader is going to see it.

Poetry & prologues

The fantasy manuscripts we see start with a snatch of poetry by way of prologue. Or if not poetry, then myth, or incantation, or something similar.

And again, you’re going to tell me that Tolkein did this all the time, and maybe he did. But poetry (and myth and the rest of it) is, almost by definition, harder to penetrate than prose. An opening needs to gently lift the reader into your story vehicle and get them drifting away from the bank, the train gliding away from the platform.

Forcing the reader to wade through a couple of pages of (often quite dodgy) poetry is the opposite of that gently lifting model. It’s like you’ve built a low wall in between the reader and the railway carriage you want them to get into.

Too much, too soon

My least-favoured story opener is with highly extreme emotion of any sort. Often some horrible situation (a prisoner under torture), but really any sort of extreme emotion, conveyed with a plethora of emotional superlatives.

The reason why this doesn’t work is that stories have the quality of new social situations. You’re meeting characters for the first time. If your best friend had a terrible heartbreak sob story, you’d be prepared to listen to the whole thing, dishing out biscuits and tissues as needed. But if you had just for the very first time met a new parent at the school gate and you got the same excessively tearful download, you’d just want to pull away.

A reader doesn’t care about an emotional drama for its own sake. They care because they care about a character. And that means learning them, building them, creating the knowledge that will generate sympathy.

That’s the ‘too much’ error, and it’s a particular bogeyman of mine. But there’s a ‘too soon’ error as well.

That error is giving away your punchline much too early. You have a world where gravity can be rubbed away via a smartphone app? Or memory works only for twenty-four hours? Or your character, a woman, is working, disguised as a man, on board an old three-master?

Then great! I love it! What great ideas!

But don’t tell me about them. Not on the first page, nor even the third, nor anywhere in the first chapter. Yes, of course, you scatter tantalising clues. A coffee machine that has to be pulled down from the ceiling. Reminder post-its on the mirror. Some odd piece of behaviour by a ‘seaman’ apparently remembering a husband.

The clues are what tantalise. They’re what drag a reader through the story. Once you deliver your punchline (“An anti-gravity app! 24 hour memory!”), that particular sequence of clues carries no more force. For sure, other things will come along – you’ll start introducing the full Technicolor complexity of your story – but we’re talking about openings. If you want to get the reader into your story-vessel and pulling happily away from shore, then those tantalising clues are a brilliant way to maintain engagement. In time, as the reader bonds with your character, you won’t need the clues any more. But during this first chapter, don’t give the game away too early. Use the clues, delay the punchline.”

For me, on the first page – in fact in the first paragraph – I try to stick to these rules:

  • A character is introduced
  • An important theme of the book is revealed (what the book is about), and
  • An uncertain, but important issue or event is presented

Here, for example, is the opening of Seeking Father Khaliq:

“May I ask you, honoured Professor al-Busiri, if you will go to meet Princess Basheera?” 

I looked up reluctantly from the student essay I was reading, and considered the bearing of the woman who had entered my office unannounced.  She was tall and slender, graceful; she was motionless, but there was a suggestion of incipient mobility.  She was dressed in a black naqib and a jilbab so that I could see only her dark eyes.  Her voice, however, had an optimistic lilt to it.  She must be about thirty, I thought.

Deliberately, I pushed the essay to one side.  “Who, may I ask, is Princess Basheera?”

“She is my employer, sir.”

“And what does this Princess Basheera want with me?”

“She has an assignment that only you can fulfil, Professor.”

New Novel

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My latest novel – my tenth – Nebrodi Montains: Th Billionaire and the Mafia is out.

Front Cover:

Back Cover:

What happens when a Black American billionaire with feral business instincts engages with a violent Sicilian Mafia family? Will his wealth become the justification for an affair that funds a migrant charity?

The billionaire and his wife, the migrant charity couple, and the Mafia family find that they are neighbors in the mysterious Nebrodi Mountains of Sicily.

Jerry Johnson, an African American billionaire from the Bronx, New York, and his young Spanish wife, Balencia Hidalgo, an accomplished artist, have renovated and enlarged their 18th-century residence in the small village of Gabiana in the Nebrodi Mountains.

The Johnson’s new neighbours are David and Eva Pretorius, who work for a refugee charity in Sicily.

Situated between the two couples is the Forio family, of which Salvatore (known as Shorty) is the head. Shorty has a wife and three married children living with him, and they are Mafia.

.

“This is a fast-paced, action-packed tale that skillfully showcases love, family, tragedy, and loss amidst a bevy of criminal activity.” – Blue Ink Reviews

Synopsis:

            Jerry Johnson, a African-American billionaire, from Bronx, New York, and his younger Spanish wife, Balencia Hidalgo, an accomplished artist, have renovated and enlarged an eighteenth-century residence in the small village of Gabiana in the Nebrodi Mountains of Sicily.  The Mansion has a full-scale drone helicopter to transfer Jerry to Palermo Airport for his business trips.  The Johnson’s new neighbours are David and Eva Pretorius, who are mid-forties, both working for a refugee charity in Sicily.  David is South African, and Eva is Italian-Swiss.  Living on the road between these two families is the Forio family, of which Salvatore (known as Shorty) is the head.  Shorty has a wife and three married children living with him.  They are mafia.  The Johnsons and the Pretorius become friends.

            Shorty’s elder son, Giuseppe (knows as Shark) gives a local shepherd a severe beating for refusing Shorty’s order not to graze his sheep on Jerry’s property.  Shorty had an illegal arrangement with the previous owner which allowed him to collect a European Union subsidy.  Jerry entices Shorty into consideration of a business relationship, which results in the carabinieri being involved and the shepherd receiving an apology.

            The Johnson children, aged 20, 18 and 16 and the Pretorius children, aged 15 and 13 are walking between their two houses.  They have asked Loredana aged, 24, who is the Pretorius children’s teacher in the local school, and has become a friend of Eva’s, to join them.  Loredana is Shorty’s youngest child.  She has severed all connections to her family because of they are Mafiosi.  As they pass Loredana’s former home, they are attacked by a dog and threatened with a gun by Shorty’s son, Lazzaro.  This altercation ends up in court where Lazzaro is found guilty of perjury and assault.

            David, who was a curator at the Uffizi Museum in Florence before he met Eva, believes that three antique religious paintings in Father Pino, the local priest’s office, may be originals by the fifteenth century Italian painter, Crivelli.  They are professionally examined and found to be Crivellis, worth an estimated £10 million.

            Aisha, a nineteen-year-old single woman from Burkina Faso makes the hazardous trip across North Africa and the Mediterranean, ending in Eva’s hostel.  Months later she is abducted with five other women, by thugs under the control of Shorty’s older daughter, Giovanna, raped and forced into prostitution in Rome.  Aisha escapes, the police are called in, and Giovanna is found guilty of modern slavery, human trafficking and accessory to murder and assault.

            Jerry hires Shorty and Lazzaro, for one hundred thousand euros, to take actions which result in his offer to buy a large neglected vineyard to be accepted.  Jerry travels to Rome to bribe two deputies (MPs) to introduce legislation which will permit him to build, operate and sell a huge solar energy power plant for a profit of seven hundred million euros.

            David and Eva, who are having difficulty raising the necessary funds to support their charity.  They approach Jerry for a donation of one million euros.  Jerry visits Eva’s hostel and proposes a monthly contribution of € one hundred thousand if she has sex with him during his monthly visits.  She reluctantly agrees.  Balencia discovers her husband’s unfaithfulness and informs David.  Jerry and Eva are confronted, and their spouses decide to take trips: Jerry to Florence to try to regain his old job at the Uffizi, Balencia initially to Spain, but later to Florence where she and David have an affair.  The married couples reconcile.  Jerry agrees to The Giving Pledge, putting fifty percent of his five billion dollars into a charitable trust.

            Santiago and Loredana fall in love.  Lazzaro, furious at Santiago’s testimony at the trial which results in him facing a five-year jail sentence, shoots and kills Santiago when he and Loredana are on a camping trip in the Nebrodis.  The Anti-Mafia Department, assisted by Loredana, the shepherd, and the Pretorius children gather the evidence which results in a life conviction for Lazzaro.  

            Shorty, enraged at the convictions of two of his children by what he sees as the actions of Jerry and prohibited by his wife from attacking Loredana, shoots down Jerry in his drone.  Jerry survives the attack.  Loredana induces family members to ‘turn grass’ and the Anti-Mafia Department gathers the evidence to convict Shorty of attempted murder.  Aisha is hired to be Jerry’s carer.

            David succeeds in obtaining the Crivellis for the Uffizi and is rehired is deputy curator. Eva is hired to work from home in Florence for the Johnson Trust.

Review: Granduncle Bertie

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This time it is one of my novels that’s reviewed, by Maria Victoria Beltran for Readers’ Favorite.

She gives it a 5 for Appearance, 5 for Plot, 4 for Development, 5 for Formatting, 4 for Marketability, and 5 for Overall Opinion.

She goes on to say: “Granduncle Bertie by William Peace is an inspirational novel about
one man’s quest for a peaceful death. The story unravels when
Albert Smithson asks his grandniece Sarah to help him write his
memoir. In the last seven years, the two have been partners in
writing popular children’s picture books, with Granduncle Bertie as
the writer and Sarah as the illustrator. As the story unravels, Sarah
finds out that Bertie is traumatized by the excruciating death of his
father and suffers from thanatophobia or fear of death. He has lived
a good life and has overcome many difficulties, and now he wants
his memoir to reflect his inner struggles. It will chronicle events in
his life that make him realize that to die in a peaceful state, he has
to accomplish three conditions.
William Peace’s Granduncle Bertie is a thought-provoking read. All
human beings begin life, and all human beings die. This is
undoubtedly a theme relevant to all of us. William Peace’s literary
style engages his readers quickly in considering essential questions
not only about how we want to die but also about how we want to
live. Narrated from the point of view of Sarah, a woman in her late
twenties, the tone is chatty and informal. Most of us can relate to
Granduncle Bertie as a familiar family story. What makes it unique
is that it attempts to explore a sensitive theme. This book suggests
that exploring one’s fear of death may allow us to live more fully.

Highly Recommended!”

New Novel: Grand Uncle Bertie

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My tenth novel “Grand Uncle Bertie” has just been published by Austin Macauley.

The synopsis of the novel is: Granduncle Bertie is the story of a frightened but determined man’s struggles to live a life that has value for him and others in the face of death.  It is set in contemporary Wandsworth, London.

Sarah, a gay, free-spirited artist in her late twenties, accepts the assignment from her granduncle, Bertie Smithson, to write his memoir.

In her first interview, Sarah discovers that Bertie has a morbid premonition of his own death brought about by his father’s remonstrations against God during his fatal illness.  During his mother’s funeral, Bertie reveals his own agnosticism, and his brother’s partner tells him that the fear of death can be overcome by a combination of faith, a deeply satisfying vocation, and meaningful family relationships.  Bertie has none of these.  With the death of his mother, Bertie must also become the patriarch of the family.

Bertie and his wife, Jo, move into his parents larger, memory-filled home.  During a holiday in Seaford, Bertie is shocked by the sudden death of a close relative.  This reinforces his own fears that his life may be cut short.  Bertie turns to his Catholic wife, Jo, for solace but Jo tells him that for his faith to be real, he must develop it himself.

Later, Bertie is shocked to discover that Jo had an affair with another man.  He confronts Jo who confesses her ‘dreadful sin’ in agony.  Bertie weighs the alternatives and forgives her.

Confronted with a series of family misadventures, including an incipient affair, theft, and selfishness, Bertie learns that a patriarch must be a disciplinarian as well as a wise leader.

Bertie is unable to relieve his younger brother Jason’s depression. When Jason commits suicide, Bertie fails to understand Jason’s death.

Sarah recalls Heather, Bertie’s granddaughter, who dies of leukaemia in spite of a stem cell transplant. Bertie wishes he could have given up his life to save her.

There is an argument between Bertie and Jo about whether their youngest, Elizabeth, should have an abortion as a result of a failed liaison, Bertie accompanies his daughter to the clinic.

In chance meetings with the ‘Professor’, a black mystic-philosopher, Bertie is introduced to the idea of a ‘fourth dimension’, a spiritual universe which parallels the matter-space universe.

Later, Bertie, in his struggle to find faith, discovers the Jewish concept of Emunah, a commitment to God. In debates with a Catholic priest, he acknowledges the role of the devil in human tragedies. 

Determined to start a meaningful second career as a writer of children’s books, Bertie overcomes obstacles and enjoys success with Sarah as a writer-artist team.  He learns that Sarah is gay.  Despite her fears, Bertie accepts her.

 Bertie discovers Hindu concepts of an infinite universe. He tries to reconcile the events of his life, concluding that life comes from God in the form of a spirit.

Enrolling on the Alpha Course, Bertie experiences awareness, completeness and asylum that never leaves him.  With Jo, he discovers the delight of teaching year four Sunday school.  He learns that he has an incurable brain cancer and dies in his sleep, surrounded by family and friends.

When I first drafted Granduncle Bertie, the narrator was the protagonist, and one literary agent told me that the story lacked tension. In order to increase the temperature of the narration, I re-wrote it to make Sarah, a young woman with a different view of life the co-narrator. This allows for disagreements and different interpretations of events.

Plotting Your Novel

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Plotting Your Novel – Ideas and Structure is a book I bought to help me make progress on a novel I started last year, but couldn’t finish.  It had some very interesting characters, a fascinating setting, and pieces of a plot that had great promise, but after about 30,000 words it ran out of steam.  So, I think this book has rescued me.  It was written by Janice Hardy, who has also written Understanding Show Don’t Tell (and Really Getting It), Understanding Conflict (and What It Really Means). and a teen fantasy trilogy.   She lives in central Florida with her husband, one yard zombie, two cats and a very nervous fresh water eel, according to her website.

Janice Hardy

The book is divided into ten workshops:

  1. Finding your writer’s process
  2. Finding ideas to write about
  3. Developing your ideas
  4. Developing your characters, point of view, theme and setting
  5. Developing your plot
  6. Determining the type of novel you’re writing
  7. Determining the size and shape of your novel
  8. Turning your ideas into a summary line
  9. Turning your summary line into a summary blurb
  10. Turning your summary blurb into a synopsis

Each workshop has brainstorming questions, exercises, and discussion in which she clarifies the meanings of the terms she uses and explaining the importance of each term.  For example there are various points of view in which a novel can be written: first person, and various third persons: a particular character, a neutral observer, limited point of view, and omniscient point of view; and there are various multiple points of view.  Each POV has advantages and disadvantages, and the choice will depend, in part, on what the author wants to reveal to the reader when.

The section on characters was helpful to me, asking me to think about the character’s objectives and his/her arc (how the character changes during the story).  This prompted me to think about the strengths and vulnerabilities of each character, a point not covered by the book, but it helped clarify his/her arc, and some plot details.  I now had a rather lengthy paragraph that describes each character.

The hook in my novel needed more thought.  Ms Hardy describes the hook as the element which catches the reader’s attention and motivates her to read more.  Hook is generated by conflict between the characters or between a character and the external environment.

Now, I think I’m in a position where I can describe the plot in more detail.  This, for me, will consist of writing out the principal kinds of events which occur in the first part (establishing the theme, the principal characters and the hook); the middle of the story in which the characters and the conflict are further developed; and the conclusion in which the conflicts are played out and the characters’ arcs are completed.

When I’ve done that, I’ll be able to write a summary line, or two, and a catchy summary blurb.  The synopsis will come when the first draft is complete.

I’ve found this book particularly useful in better organising my outlining of a novel, so that when I start writing, I rely less on imaginative story-telling and more on writing to a specification. In this way, the intensity of the novel increases and diversions decrease.

Review: Achieving Superpersonhood: Three East African Lives

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The following review is from K. C. Finn for Readers’ Favourite:

“Achieving Superpersonhood: Three East African Lives is a novel in
the literary genre penned by author William Peace. In this sweeping
narrative that crosses cultural divides and exposes the realities of
living on the continent of Africa, we encounter the choices of three
young people and how their lives are shaped by the society around
them, even when they try to break out. Dorothy is a high flyer from
a middle class family, but her political sensibilities give her cause to
protest. She becomes involved with both Hassan, the child of a
powerful Muslim family who accidentally becomes embroiled with a
terror organization, and Kamiri, a poor migrant who faces
disablement and a potentially tragic future.
“Author William Peace has created an incredibly emotive and
powerful tour de force of literary fiction, bringing East Africa to life
as the lives of three young people are changed forever. I
particularly enjoyed the omniscient narration and the conceptual
‘voices’ that the author employs to exemplify the characters’
conflicts and their concepts of right versus wrong. The
socioeconomic and political climate of Africa as a whole is very
astutely described, lending itself to the plot but not overtaking or
turning the whole tale into a commentary. Although the moral and
social points are well made, the story is what comes forward
through powerful descriptions and excellent narrative and dialogue
skills. Overall, Achieving Superpersonhood: Three East African Lives
is an accomplished work that comes highly recommended for
readers who enjoy cultural exploration and emotive, character-driven
tales.”

Editing Isn’t Easy (for the author)

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I have finished the manuscript for my latest novel.  I’ve read and re-read it several times, always finding small things that needed to be improved.

It was time to call in a professional editor, and I wanted a good one.  The editor who worked on Achieving Superpersonhood: Three East African Lives didn’t seem to understand that there were three narrators: a universal narrator, God’s representative, and the devil’s representative.  She objected repeatedly when the latter two infrequently appeared, even though each of them introduced himself (or herself) on their first appearances.  This lack of understanding seemed to colour her experience of the novel in a negative way.  Only one of the reviews since publication has disliked this device.  One was almost ecstatic about it.  From my point of view, it didn’t take a great deal of brainpower to figure it out.

Author or Editor?

So, finding a good editor isn’t easy, even though there are literally thousands of them who have set out their shingles on the Internet.  I started off trying one of the ubiquitous websites that promises all manner of help for the Indie writer.  Their offering was that they have a stable of scores of editors, and that all I had to do was specify the type of editing, and the genre of the novel.  I didn’t want copy editing (spelling, punctuation and basic grammar), and I didn’t need a re-write editor.  What I wanted was a structural editor, who would pay attention to what could be deleted, what should be added or clarified.  My input yielded the names of five editors.  To each of them I sent a message: “Yes, tell me more!”  All five of them declined; some for workload reasons; some for “don’t do that genre” reasons.

At that point, I threw the Indie approach out the window, and started looking at professional editing websites.  Having narrowed it down to one website, there were two named editors, both of whom liked working on inspirational novels, and both had glowing testimonials.  I sent each of them the synopsis.  The woman said she would take a month longer than the man.  They both were charging $0.03 per word.  I went with the man, who was enthusiastic about working on a novel about fear of dying.

The editor overran his completion target by two weeks, but he sent me several “almost finished” emails.  Then, he wanted my postal address to send me the physical edited manuscript.  There was no soft copy.  He offered to get it scanned for an extra hundred dollars.  The problem for me is that I spend the summer in Sicily, which has a third world postal service.  It took two more weeks for the physical manuscript to arrive.

I found it somewhat easier to make corrections from the physical manuscript, with the original soft copy on my laptop than to switch back and forth between copies on my laptop.

The editor was very conscientious about use of commas (I use too many); he frequently broke my long sentences into two (I generally felt he was right); he corrected my use of ‘that’ vs ‘which’ (as a result, I’ve learned the ‘that vs which rule’); he put a full stop after each abbreviated title (Dr. vs Dr).  Actually, in the UK we don’t put a full stop after Mr.; it’s always just Mr; perhaps he should have asked, because the manuscript is set in London.

He commented when a point in the text wasn’t clear, and usually, I would make a clarification.  Exception: when he challenged a character’s statement to her husband that he had determined the gender of their unborn child.  I left the text unchanged and pointed out to the editor that the male sperm determines the child’s sex, the egg is neutral.

Occasionally, he would suggest that I show the emotion a character is feeling, rather than just have him/her express it.  Being a relatively non-emotive person, I have let the characters say what they feel, but gradually I have realised that it deepens the reader’s experience to have a character express and show her feelings.

The most difficult part for me was the very frequent suggestion to ‘skip this’ of ‘drop this character’.  The compromise I worked out was that I would eliminate the social, chit-chat portions of dialogue that make it seem more real but don’t add any value for the reader.  I also scrutinised scenes to eliminate portions which seemed real, but added no value.

Here is what I said in my email to him: “You made a number of recommendations to cut scenes and characters on the basis that they tended to “stop” the story/plot.  Leaving aside that to do so would have reduced the manuscript to a sub-saleable size, your advice seems to imply that a fictional biography has a linear story/plot.  I would argue that no one has a linear life; rather, it is a collection of kaleidoscopic experiences and characters that, in the end, make us who we are.

“I have tried to structure Fear of Dying with Bertie’s fear of death as the central theme, and with three supporting themes which converge on the central theme and moderate it.  The supporting themes are Bertie’s views and feelings about family, vocation and faith.  Having read the manuscript through an extra time, I’m confident that every scene and every character supports the development of at least one of the supporting themes.  If I had a doubt about the relevance of a scene or character, I had Bertie express his view.”

His response was to the effect of “it’s your novel, you decide.”

So, my next hurdle is finding an agent.  I’ll let you know how that works out.

Review: Achieving Superpersonhood

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Achieving Superpersonhood: Three East African Lives
William Peace
Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co. (2018)
ISBN 9781948858892
Reviewed by Robert Leon Davis for Readers Views (1/19)
“Achieving Superpersonhood: Three East African Lives” by author William Peace is a novel set on the Continent of Africa, involving the personal lives of three East Africans. Each is exposed to various decisions and choices they make involving their lives, with either dire consequences or happy outcomes. The intertwining relationships between the friends is just plain awesome.
“Achieving Superpersonhood” is sort of written in the third person, which eloquently dictates the pace of the characters’ lives. There is also what I call a “footnote,” or another person speaking in the third person, which reminds one of God or Satan, (or good or bad), immediately questioning each person’s decisions. This “footnote” is the brilliancy of the author and the plot! I really don’t know how he imagined this stupendous plot or “footnote.” It’s a novel that can’t be explained but actually has to be read.
I’ve read hundreds of novels, but this is top on my list. It’s the crème de la crème of novels that I’ve read. I personally place this work in the vein of a Charles Dickens. Huh, you say? Yes, in my humble opinion. As I’ve stated and must repeat it again; the plot is beautifully set, with surprisingly contrasting differences between each character and a “can’t wait to read what’s next” feeling.
“Achieving Superpersonhood: Three East African Lives” by William Peace is an excellent, well-written novel, thought provoking on a serious level, and a beautiful flow from one incident to another. The characters also seem real, not imaginative. I thank the author for sharing this “work” not book, with me, and recommend it to the many readers who enjoy and love reading a good novel. Well done, sir. 5 stars plus!